Employer urged to rehire employee who tried to stop shoplifter
LONDON: Waitrose has been urged to rehire an employee who was sacked after attempting to stop a shoplifter stealing a bag of Easter eggs.
Walker Smith was dismissed following an altercation with the thief in the supermarket’s Clapham Junction store in south London.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has written to Tom Denyard, the boss of Waitrose, saying that Mr Smith must be reinstated.
The Tory frontbencher said in a letter that while the Government and police must do more to tackle shoplifting, “store staff and the public should be supported and encouraged to intervene as well”.
“Otherwise shoplifting will continue to surge unchecked,” he added.
Mr Smith said the thief was well known to staff and had targeted the store before.
The 54-year-old said he confronted the individual and “grabbed the bag” of Easter eggs, but the thief pulled it back, leading to a brief struggle. The bag split and Lindt gold bunny Easter eggs, worth £13 each, fell to the floor before the shoplifter fled.
Mr Smith picked up a piece of one of the broken eggs and “threw it out of frustration” towards some shopping trolleys. He told The Guardian he was not aiming for the shoplifter.
A few days later, he was hauled into a meeting with two store managers.
Despite a final plea – telling his bosses that “Waitrose is like my family” – he was dismissed.
In his letter, Mr Philp said Waitrose should “support staff facing this kind of behaviour, not penalise them”.
“Waitrose has behaved disgracefully by sacking Mr Smith. I urge you to reinstate him immediately, apologise to him and pay him a bonus for his bravery and initiative,” he added.
Mr Philp said Mr Smith’s case reflected a “wider and growing problem” with shoplifting in society.
“Staff safety must come first. But dismissing a long-serving employee in these circumstances sends entirely the wrong message. It penalises those who act, while offenders are left unchecked,” he said.
Waitrose responded to Mr Smith’s allegations by claiming that the “reporting on this does not cover the full facts of the situation”.
A spokesman previously said: “While we would never be able to discuss an individual case, we can assure you the correct process is being followed, which includes a standard appeals procedure.
“We’ve had incidents where our partners have been hospitalised when challenging shoplifters. Luckily, they have always recovered, but that might not always be the case. There is a serious danger to life in tackling shoplifters. We refuse to put anyone’s life at risk and that’s why we have policies in place that are very clearly understood and must be strictly followed.
“As a responsible employer, we never want to be in a position where we are notifying families of a tragedy because someone tried to stop a theft. Nothing we sell is worth risking lives for.”
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said last month that she would be prepared to confront a shoplifter if they were “not too big”.
She said the public’s failure to intervene had made shoplifters and other criminals “think that they can get away with it”.
Official figures show there were 519,381 shoplifting offences recorded in England and Wales in the year to September 2025, a 5 per cent rise on the 492,660 logged the previous year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
That total is below the record 530,643 offences recorded in the 12 months to March 2025.
